


She Had Fire In Her Soul

by RoryKurago



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: (sort of), Alternate Universe - Boxing, Alternate Universe - Fight Club Fusion, BAMF Mako Mori, Cage Fights, Fight Club - Freeform, Fighting Kink, Multi, Polyamory, Tumblr Ask Box Fic, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-18
Updated: 2016-03-18
Packaged: 2018-05-27 10:56:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6281788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoryKurago/pseuds/RoryKurago
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raleigh's bout for the night was over; Mako’s was just ramping up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	She Had Fire In Her Soul

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MaverickSawyer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaverickSawyer/gifts).



> Prompt: Maleigh + _Into The Night_ by Santana  
>  A long time ago, MaverickSawyer requested Maleigh + 'Into The Night', and since (A) I'm super slack, (B) MaverickSawyer is pretty awesome, this fic is the result of the intervening seven months. 
> 
> Sawyer, it's probably not exactly what you had in mind, but I hope it's okay? Happy unbirthday!
> 
>  
> 
> **EDIT: Disconnecting this story from _First Floor People_ because while it's still correct chronology, I'm not happy at all with the way this piece turned out so I'm re-writing it. First revised piece is _The Saints of Sweat and Strappings_. **

_………_

_She had fire in her soul, it was easy to see / how the devil himself could be pulled out of me / There were drums in the air as she started to dance / Every soul in the room keeping time with their hands_

_………_

The crowd was roaring. Vanessa had to raise her voice to be heard as she slipped up to the railing beside Raleigh. “She’s really something, isn’t she?”

Down in the Pit, the next fight had begun. Vanessa let her shoulder bump Raleigh’s familiarly as the crowd surged forward to the rail. Sheathed in a slinky dress, with her curls loose and a glass of champagne in her hand instead of a clipboard, Raleigh hardly recognised her. But the smirk was familiar.

He looked at her sidelong. His bout for the night was over; Mako’s was just ramping up.

On the other side of the Pit, Pentecost leant on a railing to watch his daughter circle, Herc leaning on his shoulder. Whispering, not shouting: probably updating Pentecost on the prognosis of Chuck’s opponent. Bad form to have fighters die on Shatterdome turf.

Although the men hit hard to keep up, the fighters in the Shatterdome stable were mostly women. Sasha Kaidonovsky fought like a tank: indestructible and inexhaustible, bearing through her opponents’ attacks and then smashing them from inside their guard. Yuna and So-Yi fought like surgeons, if Raleigh could describe the way they dismantled their opponents so prosaically. They were high-octane anti-Hippocratic: baiting their opponents from beyond reach with teeps and fast jabs until they nicked an opening and cut at the ankle, knee, waist. On nasty nights, the neck.

 _They win on points_ , one of the Weis had told Raleigh once, joining him ringside in the training room while the Koreans sparred. (His brothers followed Pentecost through to the office.) “Not a bad strategy,” Wei had said, “considering they’re welterweights.”

Divisions down in the underground got _hazy_ when the stakes started rising. Raleigh had thought about that when two Weis emerged from Pentecost’s office – the last tucking an envelope into his suit jacket – but not about Yancy. (Not about a twenty-pound difference and all Raleigh’s postcards to Jaz returned to sender. Not about Yancy too cocky to see his opponent haul up off the floor and hit Yancy so hard he spun around and hit the mat chest-first, or the burst vessels in Yancy’s eye as he stared directly through the wire at Raleigh.)

Mako had followed the Weis out. The triplet talking to Raleigh had peeled off without a word and fallen in step with his brothers, nodding to Mako as he did.

Chuck had taken his place. “The Weis used t’ be monsters in the Pit,” he’d said, watching them leave with the expression he wore sizing up opponents in the Pit. “They were their own melee team, when the rewards were good enough t’ risk ‘em all at once. They don’t fight anymore.”

Raleigh hadn’t asked what they did now instead. He also, pointedly, did not ask why Mako was going with them.

Raleigh hadn’t been surprised to learn Herc was originally a fighter—or that Herc and Pentecost started up the Shatterdome in partnership twelve years back alongside another fighter, Tamsin Sevier. He _had_ been surprised to learn that the reason a Brit and an Australian were running an underground fight club in Chicago was that the Brit’s sister had died in one.

San Francisco, 2013.

The day Mako had told Raleigh that, the three of them – her, Raleigh, and Chuck – were sitting on the gym roof with a couple of beers watching the sun come up on the new year. Mako, her back against Chuck, had drained the last of her bottle and remarked that Luna Pentecost always used to complain Corona wasn’t real beer. Raleigh had never heard the name before that; he’d made a point not to ask about the past, the way Mako had waited three months before asking about the ring on the chord around his neck. (Maman’s ring. Yancy’s.) Mako never mentioned it again.

 _I am coming for the ones who hurt me_ , read a line of hiragana along the edge of Mako’s chainsword tattoo. Mako was not religious. She didn’t pray; didn’t believe in anything but the church of sweat and strappings. But she still burnt incense for her parents and in the Ready Room, before every fight, she touched her tattoo like a talisman and glanced at the photo on the wall: Herc, Stacker, Tamsin and Luna all in shinpads and shorts in the ring.

As if alerted to their eyes in the present, Herc lifted his eyes to Raleigh and Vanessa. After a second he nodded to Vanessa.

She sighed and sipped her champagne. No EMTs for her to pay off tonight.

Down in the Pit, Mako’s opponent – a 5’ 6” Argentinean with two long pink-shot braids to match Mako’s blue – made an ill-advised lunge. Mako took her arm and levered it into a knee in the stomach.

On slow nights, in between re-runs of _Kingdom_ and _How It’s Made_ , Mako dug out Luna and Tamsin’s old recordings. Luna and Tamsin, Raleigh understood, were something of a gold standard for the Shatterdome fighters. Mako watched their fights like sermons.

The double-tap knee she executed on Lavezzi was quoted straight from Sister Tamsin. Vanessa smiled into her champagne.

Mako let Lavezzi back away retching. With a wicked grin, Mako started to dance.

She wasn’t going for the quick kill tonight. Raleigh suspected it might be because this morning she’d woken up counting back from a nightmare, and a dozen laps around the park hadn’t taken the edge off. Her expression as she warmed up with Chuck this morning had been dangerous.

If not that, it was because she hadn’t orgasmed in a week.

A hand clapped onto his shoulder. The crowd to his side made way (unwillingly) for Chuck to lean on the rail. He pressed against Raleigh’s side. The smell of antiseptic hung around him, sharp in Raleigh’s nose over the hot metal of the Pit lights and the perfumes and colognes of the crowd. He had three new stitches in his eyebrow but he was upright and smirking.

“Christ, she’s a fucking phenomenon,” he breathed.

Mako bared her teeth and knocked aside a weak roundhouse to knee Lavezzi in the kidney.

Raleigh sucked a breath through his teeth.

 _Chuck_ was a phenomenon, when he wasn’t trying to knock Raleigh’s teeth in. (“Turnabout’s fair play,” Chuck said once, pulling up his wifebeater to display an imprint of Raleigh’s heel. Up on the kitchen counter behind Chuck, Mako had put her hand over it and kissed his shoulder—the teethmarks in it.)

But Mako—

But Mako was synoptic. A hurricane.

The bell sounded the end of Round One. Lavezzi had survived. Raleigh didn’t think she’d consider it a miracle.

Tendo, Sasha, and Aleksis were Mako’s Pit crew for tonight. Sasha was making cutting motions with her hands that boded ill for Lavezzi, while Aleksis – grinning in a way that showed too many of his teeth – lifted a water-bottle to Mako’s mouth, followed by a bucket for her to spit into.

Tendo signalled a surreptitious _okay_ to Pentecost. The Brit nodded.

So-Yi appeared at Vanessa’s elbow with news of an issue, and Vanessa excused herself to deal with it. A Shatterdome runner appeared with lowballs of whiskey, neat, for Raleigh and Chuck. Raleigh turned his down but Chuck drank his with the relish of a man well satisfied that he’d sweated for it.

In the Pit, Mako swiped at her eyes with her tattooed arm and stood up.

The next round, she was off the chain. She came in fast with jabs and then hooked up into a gap in Lavezzi’s guard. The Argentinean lurched back. Mako slipped into the gap and locked her arms around Lavezzi’s neck.

Lavezzi got a few good shots in before Mako consolidated the hold. Without unlocking her hands, Mako bowed her body out and wrenched Lavezzi down face-first into Mako’s knee.

Lavezzi didn’t let go, though. Holding onto Mako, she dragged herself up and – maybe accidentally – smashed her forehead into Mako’s. That took Mako off-guard. She staggered, struggling to maintain control of the clinch. The two of them jagged each other a few good turns around the Pit.

When they hit a wall, Lavezzi got a break. Shoving Mako into the concrete hard enough to make her grunt, Lavezzi jerked her head free of Mako’s hold, twisted her back to Mako’s front, and hip-threw her. Mako huffed as the air was driven out of her lungs.

The crowd hissed. Raleigh frowned into the Pit. That was unorthodox, but technically legal. Lavezzi getting an arm around Mako’s neck and attempting to choke her out was not.

Sasha and the referee both had one foot inside the painted border of the ring before Mako reached back, got a good hold on Lavezzi’s braid and hauled down on it.

Lavezzi somersaulted into Mako’s lap.

Mako shoved her away. Both women scrambled back to their feet as the ref got in between them, arms trembling at full extension to hold them apart. Raleigh couldn’t see Mako’s face with her back to the wall under his feet, but he saw Lavezzi’s face twist. Straining against the hand on her sternum, she craned her head forward and hissed something at Mako.

Raleigh missed what it was over the roar of the crowd, but it ended with _Tamsin._

Mako tensed. Raleigh didn’t need to be inside her head to see her whiting out.

Chuck’s unsympathetic chuckle was a buzz in his ear. “Shit’s about t’ hit the fan now.”

Oblivious, the ref stepped out from between them and dropped his hand.

Years with Pentecost hadn’t dampened thirteen-year-old Mako’s hunger for blood. Only honed it. She closed for a clinch with the appearance of recklessness. Lavezzi saw the bait and took it.

She grunted as Mako caught the leg Lavezzi threw at her and used it as leverage to hook Lavezzi’s other ankle and drop her. Once she was down, she was out.

If Chuck had had the shot, Raleigh reflected, he’d have dropped down on Lavezzi and laid her open with all the ferocity of a month of frustration and night terrors. Maybe opened her up to the bone. But Mako wasn’t Chuck.

Instead, she dropped to one knee and drove down one clean straight that snapped Lavezzi’s head to the side like an off switch.

The crowd went silent. Raleigh might have been underwater, deafly watching their mouths drop open in mute slow motion. Across the Pit, Pentecost pushed up from the railing, and smiled.

A rumble started, dulled as if by distance, and then sound boomed around Raleigh. The crowd roared.

In the Pit, Mako hadn’t moved, braced in place over Lavezzi with her arm extended and chest heaving. Her chainsword tattoo pointed straight down. The way sweat poured off her, the blade seemed to glint in the glare of the Pit lights.

Sasha had to help her up to her feet, stood with one hand on Mako’s hip while the ref hoisted Mako’s hand into the air. Mako’s eyes never left Lavezzi. She watched even while Tendo and a medic checked the downed woman over.

When the ref dropped her arm, Mako swayed but she waved Sasha and Aleksis away. She walked out of the ring under her own power.

With the fight over, Raleigh and Chuck went to get another drink. Mako would find them when she was ready. Raleigh considered the fight while Chuck enthusiastically dissected it with a punter who made the mistake of being loudly opinionated. Raleigh had never seen Mako like that.

He was on his way out of the bathroom when someone seized his jacket and spun him down an unlit side corridor.

Mako, dressed in her mingling dress and smelling like fruit bodywash, kissed him like it had been longer than a week. A sizable bruise on her forehead from the headbutt had to hurt but she didn’t seem to notice. Raleigh flattened both hands on her back and pulled her closer. Mako hissed. She still tasted like fight.

When she pulled back there was blood on her lip from Raleigh’s. Noticing his gaze, she grinned. The tip of her tongue flicked out and cleaned it off.

Raleigh swallowed. “You did good out there.”

“Thank you.”

“Chuck’s arguing with some meathead about Pentecost’s betting policy—do you want to go back to the party? See your dad?”

This time, she licked her lip very slowly. “No.”

“Lavezzi… what did she say?”

Mako considered him without speaking for a long moment. Then she let out a measured breath. “Does it matter? She ate her words anyway.”

“No,” Raleigh said after a second. “If it doesn’t matter to you, it doesn’t matter to me.” He drew her in again. Mako pressed closer, cupping one hand around his neck. Her grip, after the violence of the Pit, was gentle, callused thumb scraping on his stubble. Raleigh hissed; Mako had found the split in his lip with her tongue.

She worried at it, eyes opening to watch him. She hadn’t got blood from Lavezzi—not enough of it. The rest had to come from somewhere.

Chuck manifested beside them in the gloom too quietly for his size. He took in Raleigh’s bleeding lip, Mako’s expression.

“We hitting the road?” he asked.

Mako took them both by the hand. The corridor might be trafficked, but the training gym would be empty.


End file.
